By Le Figaro with AFP
Posted 1 hour ago, updated 54 minutes ago
Activists of the Alliance Against NATO network with PKK flags during a demonstration in Stockholm June 4, 2023. MAJA SUSLIN / AFP
Stockholm is de facto responding to a condition set by Ankara for its NATO membership.
The Swedish government announced on Monday 12 June that it would extradite to Turkey a Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) supporter convicted in his country of drug trafficking, in de facto response to a condition imposed by Ankara on accession Sweden to NATO.
“The government has decided to authorize the extradition of a 35-year-old Turkish citizen from Sweden,” Ashraf Ahmed, an official at Sweden’s justice ministry, told AFP. The citizen in question claims to be targeted by the Turkish government because of his sympathies with the PKK. Once the Turkish Ministry of Justice has been notified, the Swedish government has four weeks to implement the extradition.
four years in prison
This 35-year-old man was sentenced to more than four years in prison in Turkey in 2014 for carrying a bag of cannabis. This emerges from a ruling by the Swedish Supreme Court, which gave the green light for this extradition in early June. After being released on parole, he moved to Sweden but was arrested in August at the request of Turkish prosecutors, who ordered him to serve out the rest of his sentence. He claims to have been targeted by the Turkish authorities for his support of the PKK.
Turkey has blocked Sweden’s entry into the Atlantic Alliance for 13 months, blaming the country for its leniency towards the Kurdish militants it harbors on its soil. Ankara is demanding the extradition of dozens of activists living on Swedish soil it calls “terrorists”. According to the Swedish executive, this request cannot be complied with as the independent courts have the final say on these files.